Mine was also around '91. I lived in a small town and so while it seemed as though people started buying more PCs a few years later I was definitely one of the few who had access to the Internet early.

Forums and chat were captivating at the time. I remember timing my after school routine to be able to hit up a "chat room" of people I had found through a random forum. And then we found IRC which changed the game.

I also got a check pretty early on the Internet for banner ads I had on my site. That was around '95 or '96, I believe. I was amazed that someone would send me money for that. The site back then was probably popular because I had an early web cam and would often have it on while I was talking in public chats or on IRC. I feel like the Internet was friendlier back then, definitely not something I'd be comfortable doing anymore. But I remember continuing to collect those checks all the way through early college as the site changed, I ran a small forum, and started to write small how-to posts as I had gotten more intrigued with BSD & Linux around '98.

I'm surprised the timing of connection for the author, though. We had dial up first, obviously. But I got a cable modem around '96 or '97. 1Mb/s down (no idea what it was up)! Game changing for sure. Today I have symmetrical fiber to the house, yet it's not fun like it used to be. It's turned into a commodity, a utility you just require as the author points out.

I think the Internet for me changed around the time the first iPhone came out. Prior to that I feel like the Internet still had character and most generally didn't have access to the Internet from their phone, or if so it was very limited. The mobile web back then was still pretty bad, especially with all of the heavy browser components mobile devices definitely couldn't handle. Flash, Silverlight, Java, etc.

I've spent time with my kids to show them things on the Internet but for them it's very different. Access is assumed and it's generally looked at like I looked at FM radio or broadcast TV. It's hard to get excited for them when my main concern is making sure they know about data, privacy and general security. Very different indeed and feel lucky to have experienced the early Internet.

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randallsquared 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> I feel like the Internet was friendlier back then, definitely not something I'd be comfortable doing anymore.

It was a novelty, then (remember Jennicam?), but now "streamer" is just a normal profession.

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myself248 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Hosting a talk-show / variety-show hasn't been a novelty in a long time either, what's new is doing it as an independent creator for an audience of 20 or maybe 200, rather than 2,000,000.

What's depressing to me is that the broadcasting network still has the same old standards-and-practices censorship. Despite the peer-to-peer promise of the internet, peer streaming just hasn't taken off. And in recent years it's getting harder to have a real IP address in the first place, so that window seems like it's closing.

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HappMacDonald 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If only someone would just bump up the size of the address space, so that there would be enough to go around again.

I mean, it's kinda like Y2K, isn't it? We're stuck with this old addressing scheme that chose 32 bits per address back when that was a lot for any computer to comfortably handle. But today if we used up twice.. no, even four times as many bits no PC would bat an eyelash and the increase in address space would be truly exponential.

It's just a shame that so much built infrastructure expects the current addressing system that it would probably take a life time to phase out. Plus that if anyone tried to rebuild it from scratch they would probably forget to make it backwards compatible, and also change so many things about it that it becomes a nightmare for anyone to try to implement. It's like trying to pass a new law and it gets infected by death-by-a-thousand-riders as a prerequisite to passing. :'(

	▲	NetOpWibby 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We could just use IPv6, no?

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reaperducer 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

what's new is doing it as an independent creator for an audience of 20 or maybe 200, rather than 2,000,000.

I guess you never lived in a place with public access cable. This has been going on for 50 years. It's not new at all.

	▲	myself248 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Whenever I stopped on the public access channel, it was reruns of city council meetings and stuff. I've heard about all sorts of wild and wooly productions by teenagers and weirdos, but never saw any myself.

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windexh8er 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, I definitely remember Jennicam now that you bring it up. There were a lot of people vying for cam attention back then, I think it's basically the inception of the influencers we see today. Then again I don't know that anyone thought it was really something of a way to make a living. Maybe a very small few, but if any of those early day cammers/streamers had tried to get a discount at a restaurant for a positive review that would have been met with confusion for sure. I guess when one calls themselves an "influencer" they know what they're after.